OSRS Tribal Totem Quest Guide: Beginner-Friendly

The Tribal Totem quest sends you to recover a sacred artefact belonging to the Rantuki tribe of Karamja, stolen by the nobleman Lord Handelmort. This is a short, simple quest focused on light thieving and puzzle mechanics.

General Questing Tips

• Turn on the RuneLite Quest Helper in your plugins—it highlights every step and makes questing far easier. Hold spacebar to speed through dialogue and use number keys to select chat options instantly.

Time Taken: Tribal Totem took me about 5 minutes to complete. You should expect the same since it is quite easy

Requirements for Tribal Totem

Skill Requirements

• 21 Thieving
  
  

Quest & Item Requirements

• None
    

Recommended Items

• You’ll need 90+ coins for the boat trips between Brimhaven and Ardougne.

• Ardougne teleport, Ardougne cloak, or 30GP to take boat from Rimmington to Ardougne. If using Ardougne teleport, make sure you’ve completed Plague City first.

Tribal Totem Quest Walkthrough

Start the Quest in Brimhaven

• Teleport or take a boat to Ardougne. Once there, head to the docks and hop on the south boat to Brimhaven. Then make your way to Kangai Mau in the Brimhaven food store (see the map below) and pick dialogue options 2 → 1 to accept the mission and start the quest.

• If you’re low-level, watch out for spiders along the way—they’ll try to attack. There’s a food store just north of him, and the Karambwans there heal up to 18 HP, which is super handy for future quests where you might need some extra healing.

Redirect the Crate at the Ardougne GPDT Depot

• Take the boat back to Ardougne or just teleport there and make your way to the GPDT depot in East Ardougne. Check the north-eastern crate (shown in the image below) to find an address label for Lord Handelmort. 

• Then, use that label on the east crate meant for the Wizards’ Tower’s Chamber of Invention shown in the image below.

Enter Handelmort’s Mansion & Unlock the Door

• Once you’re inside the mansion, head west through the two doors shown in the image below. The second door’s locked with a keypad.

Here’s the code to get through:
K = 10 right
U = 6 left
R = 9 left
T = 7 left

Quick tip: click slowly—RuneScape sometimes doesn’t register super fast arrow presses, so take your time.

Investigate the Trapdoor Staircase (Important!)

• Before heading up the stairs, make sure to investigate the stairs first. If you just climb without checking, you’ll fall straight into the Ardougne Sewers.

• If that happens, don’t worry—just go southwest, climb the ladder, and talk to Cromperty again to teleport back. You won’t have to redo the keypad puzzle.

• Also, even if the game says “You don’t find anything interesting,” you still need 21 Thieving to move forward.

Climb Up & Retrieve the Tribal Totem

• After you’ve investigated safely, climb the stairs and head into the eastern room. Open the chest shown in the image below and search it to grab the Tribal Totem.

• If you want, you can drop it and search again for extra copies, though honestly, I don’t think they’re useful for anything.

Finish the Quest

• Return to Kangai Mau by taking the boat from Ardougne to Brimhaven and hand over the totem.

Quest Complete!

Rewards from Tribal Totem

• 1 Quest Point
• 1,775 Thieving XP
• 5 Swordfish

The tribal totem is very quick and has only one requirement, making it a great quest to knock out quickly for players looking for easy Thieving XP. If you’d like to continue training thieving, check our thieving training guide